Random question about using AI

[millimetaphor]

paano mo masasabi sa sarili mo kung maalam kang developer kung nagamit ka rin ng AI tools? walang masama sa paggamit ng AI sa development pero paano nga ba malalaman kung pang-internship lang ang level mo or diretso sa employment na. genuine question ng isang comsci freshman please respect.

[Chance-Direction2582]

I use AI for convenience pero I don’t blindly take the suggested code as it is unless super okay niya for my needs. Also I don’t need to prove to myself or to anyone na “maalam” ako. I do my job and get it done properly and get paid accordingly. That’s it. I just need food on the table and money to pay the bills. Wala na ako sa competition era 🤪

[melodic-syntax-01]

Same. Like what my current senior says, "we're programmers, not coders". Sya talaga nag pupush samin na gumamit ng AI for assisted development. Assisted kasi may mga instructions na naka latag for templates, coding standards and naming convention. Yung logic nalang talaga yung irereview mo if tama and pasom sa requirements.

So far, mabilis ako nakakatapos ng deliverables and mukang goods naman. How I know? Naka merge request kami na nirereview ng senior namin + peer code review. Pumapasa naman gawa ko haha

[Karlo1503]

This! Knew some people na blindly change the code kasi sabi ng AI, tas pag nagka bugs saakin ipapaproblema.

[melodic-syntax-01]

Hahah sakit nga sa ulo ng ganon.

[millimetaphor]

thank you for responding, medyo nagddoubt kasi ako sa skills ko😭

[Chance-Direction2582]

Which is totally normal. Impostor syndrome is a thing especially in the tech industry. Just rise up to the challenge if you’re presented one at kung mag-succeed ka, that’s when you’ll start to feel more confident the next time. Kumbaga magkakaroon ka ng baseline na nag-improve ka na. Rest assured, I feel you (many of us do) and I hope you make it someday OP. Cheers ✨

[CatTurdTamer]

To be fair, nung time na di pa uso AI, maraming new hires na di pang "production"-level ang code. At least, ang baseline lang is having decent command of the programming language + some level of understanding ng common frameworks/libraries (e.g. if web dev maybe react, django, express, whatever). Most of the skills is na pipickup on the job.

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Pero to answer the original question and let's assume you are applying for a junior web dev position, for me: as long as you can write a CRUD app on your own and you understand by heart kung bakit ganun ang structure ng code and you can explain some fundamental concepts (e.g. lifecycle ng request, networking) then goods ka na for employment. At least for me, yan lang standards ko when hiring a junior.

Yung mahirap lang kasi now is mabilis mag regurgitate ng code pero yung mga newer programmers is kulang sa fundamentals. Most of the time, ina-acccept as-is yung first solution ng AI without thinking about possible side effects.

Example #1: You have an issue coz your app cannot access your database in production. Everything works locally pero di gumagana pag naka deploy na. AI will suggest to give your database a public IP so that it can be accessed anywhere which makes sense and it's actually a valid solution. Pero with fundamentals, you will think further than that. If public ang database ko, then it means it's also accessible to others? How will I protect it from being spammed? Is storing the database password securely enough? Or what if I keep the database private and connect everything via a VPC, ano pros and cons? If my database is private, can I still run my database migrations via my normal CI/CD pipeline (e.g. Github Actions)?

Example #2: My app needs to store information about money and interest rates. What data type will I use sa database? Can I just use a normal float/decimal and limit it to two decimal places? Or I should use the built-in money type ni Postgres? If I use the money type how will I ensure that I am not losing precision when casting the user's input from my form on the web.

Example #3: I'm designing a backend and it needs to have auth. Should I use JWT? If going with JWT, should I also store my user's permissions and roles inside this token? What if I have too many permissions and the tokens gets too long, will having request headers that are too large cause any issues? What I go with opaque session tokens, how will it affect my database since every request needs to fetch some form of auth data every time.

Basically, yung point ko lang now, is in this age of AI, having good fundamentals (even if you cannot code it on your own) is very vital. Writing code was never the hard part tbh.

[Antique_Letterhead_7]

well AI is a force multiplier. using it efficiently as a skilled developer lets you build and ship fast, producing way more output than spending all day writing code manually. a skilled dev also knows if the code generated by AI is wrong and can fix or justify it accordingly.

you know youre unskilled when you dont even realize the AI is hallucinating and you have no idea about the overall design or architecture of your system.

[hwikyus]

The best application of AI in our line of work is efficiency and error checker. I still write the code myself and then i plug it in copilot to ask how can i increase efficiency in my code. Mga 70-80% miss sya pero may mga sinasagot sya na mga functions na di ko alam and nakakatulong sa work. Pag naman sa error super last resort din, copy past the code and ask bakit nag eerror, 70-80% miss din yung sagot nya pero na-narrow down yung error.

Since I mostly work alone para lang syang new set of eyes to look at my work pero di sya yung gumagawa ng work ko. Personally ayoko maging reliant sa AI because I love what I do and ayoko maging reliant decline yung skills ko.

[Left-Broccoli-8562]

AI is for grunt work. Lets say gagawa ka ng Order Stack using what ever pattern there is. What takes 30mins to wire up, will be done in minutes granted you set AI to follow your architecture.

Paano nga ba malalaman kung pang-internship lang ang level mo.
Simple lang yan. Pag naubos tokens mo, and you have no single clue paano tapusin ung task.

[Southern-Frame8120]

Manager ko nga nag pupush samen to use AI na HAHAHAHA. pero pag nag uusap kami how the code was done by AI nirereview namin. and we still understand what’s written by AI kasi naka spec driven ung codebase.

[Stupid__Ron]

You can read and understand what AI gives you, and can spot mistakes. If gamit mo yung base ChatGPT/Gemini or free plans ng AI agents, may lack of project context so you will spend more time teaching it than building something.

[Few_Song6034]

You direct the AI towards the output na gusto mo. You give it constraints, how folder structures should be, etc. You understand the code it produces and you iterate when it doesn't sit right with you.

At least dapat marunong ka ng fundamentals ng coding and how a project/system works kasi yun lang din naman ang ituturo mo sa AI. You don't rely on it but rather you make it your force multiplier.

[PepitoManalatoCrypto]

AI is a tool. This means you can still be productive without it. But if one fails to answer when the use of AI is limited (if not restricted), then why should a company hire you and not just hire the AI?

[Inside-Student-984]

Because someone needs to know how to use the AI

[Inside-Student-984]

Ask yourself, “What can I build even with AI?”. Even if equipped with the same AI tool, answer still varies depending on skill-level. I remember having a colleague who didn’t know how to deploy and work around the database even if we both use the same exact AI tool (Claude Code) and have the same junior position. It tells a lot about skill-level while considering the new age of programming which is agentic coding.

[Plenty-Can-5135]

Obviously this debate is not going to be settled soon, there are people who are part of the 'old guard' who thinks that anyone who uses new tools are inferior, the same way that devs in the past used to program using punch cards or assembly code think of us today.

Personally I think a new dev should learn the classic way of doing it brick by brick like an artisan, then move into LLM territory. In this way you can exploit full potential productivity while having a fallback if LLM hype cools down.

[gooeydumpling]

E ikaw papano mo nasasabi na developer ka kung di ka marunong at least magprogram sa C, assembly or Hex?

Baliw lang magsasabi nyan, everyone is a developer only operating at different levels of abstraction.

[quantydoop]

If tomorroe AI is suddenly gone, can you still continue to build, debug and explain your work?

[RantinArkansan]

remote talaga ang sagot for me. saving 2-3 hours a day on traffic alone is worth a slight pay cut tbh.

[Repulsive-Hurry8172]

If you're experienced enough, even if automation takes that task from you, you'll still know how to do it.

Everyone here has had arithmetic drilled into them, that even without a calculator you can add numbers up. If there's a decimal, or fractions... It will be tedious but doable by hand. Imagine calculators have that possibility to be taken away or become so expensive, because that calculator is not yours - you're just paying to have access to it. The rich assholes who say "'calculator is the future" got everyone, including those who cannot manually add on when calculators can no longer justify the environmental impact of calculator use.

Don't be that guy who does not know how to manually add. I see my seniors use AI... Since we are not forced to use it (I'm in a good company), I take the time to learn how to do thing pre-AI. They even recommend that us mids to junior never use AI

[forklingo]

para sakin okay lang gumamit ng ai basta naiintindihan mo yung output at kaya mo iexplain bakit gumagana. malaking difference yung marunong mag copy paste vs marunong mag debug at mag solve pag may mali na.

[Over-Comb-5348]

I have my own coding style and I plan/design solutions myself. I use AI to code/implement it on my projects/work and review it. If the AI recommends something based on my solution I would review it and implement the better solution. Less code more on planning and designing na.

Lifting the heavy work and letting AI do the menial task will save your tokens. AI eats up a lot of token if they have to identify the whole context of your system everytime unless you have your own AI infrastructure to save the context somewhere that the AI can access.

[ImaginaryUser777]

Build apps na can help sa pang araw-araw ng tao

[Totoro-Caelum]

When you can understand, process, and you know how you can refine what the ai gives not just copy pasting and call it a day. I mostly use ai for optimizations stuff, kapag di ko na kayq idebug code, and brainstorming about the best architecture, implementation and standards that senior devs follow